“Anna, don’t you . . . ?”
“I have a lot to sort out and I need time to think, so please don’t talk to me about it right now.” With his shoulders hunched in defeat, he looked so pitiful I almost felt bad for him.
“Okay,” he said. “Can I just say one more thing?”
I leaned back in the chair and fidgeted.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes when it comes to you, and I said a lot of things that were uncalled for and horrible. I thought I knew you then, and that I had a right to judge you, but I was an idiot. You didn’t deserve any of that. I’m sorry, Anna.”
I stared down at my hands, and then leaned forward and placed my hands on top of my books.
“Did you want to work on the paper or the board?” I asked.
“I’ll work on the board,” he said. “Unless you want to.”
“No, that’s fine. I need your part, though,” I said as I hunted in my bag for a pen.
“Okay.” He got up. “I left my bag in the kitchen. I’ll be right back.”
After he walked out, I leaned over my books, tapping my forehead against them and groaning.
At this stage of the game, I couldn’t not believe him. The proof was sitting right in front of me. I could see that he was sorry about it, and he’d done nothing but apologize to me since. The fact of the matter, though, was that he’d still said those things. He’d been saying them since middle school and realizing that no matter what kind of person he’d recently turned in to, all of the comments and the insults from the past still hurt now. I couldn’t just put those feelings aside when I’d been dealing with them for so long, when I’d been so bitter toward him and his friends for so long. A big part of me didn’t fully understand why he was so willing to turn his back on his friends and his reputation for me.
I looked up when he walked back into the room, and I stared hard at him as he sat down again.
“What?” he asked.
“Why?” I blurted. “Why are you putting so much time and effort into me?”
“Because you’re worth it,” he said in a soft voice.
“This is not a L’Oreal commercial, Evan.”
He slouched back into his chair, crossing his arms over his chest, and stared at the table. “I don’t know what else you want me to say to you,” he said. “I meant everything I’ve said, and you don’t . . .”—he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table to cradle his head—“I’m not that person anymore, Anna. I know that the video was only three weeks ago, but you know as well as I do; three weeks can change everything. Looking back, I didn’t like the person I was, and I know right now that I’d never go back to that. I need you to trust me on that. If you don’t then I don’t know what else to do. I’ll leave you alone when this is done, and that’ll be it.”
The ache I’d been feeling for the past three days got worse, and I looked down at my books again.
“Okay,” I whispered.
He was quiet and out of curiosity, I looked up at him, my heart beating faster when I saw that his hands were covering his face. I was at a complete loss for words, not knowing what was going on in his head. It was then that I noticed the faint bruising on the knuckles of his right hand, and I glanced over at the pictures still littering the tabletop.
“What do you want to put on the board?” he asked, his voice strained.
“Whatever you think is best.”
He stared out the windows in front of him and crossed his arms on the table, and then he leaned over, unzipped his bag, and pulled out his notebook. He flipped it open and ripped out a few sheets, handing them over to me and snapping it closed again. “I know that you don’t want to be here,” he said. “If you just want to do that at home, you can go.”
“Are you kicking me out?”
“No. I’m just giving you a reason to leave like I know you want to. I’m trying to make this as easy as possible for you.”
“You think this is easy?”
He shrugged.
“It’s not . . . I feel like every part of me has just been . . . ripped open. Like everything I’m feeling or thinking is on display and I can’t . . .”—I closed my eyes when they filled again—“I hate feeling that way. I hate that you made me feel that way. I hate that I let you get to me and made me forget about everything you’d ever done . . .”
“You hate me, I get it.”
“I don’t!” I exclaimed, opening my eyes to look at him again. “I just need to figure things out.”
I stared at his profile, and his jaw twitched.
“You have no intentions of ever trusting me, do you?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know what to do, Evan.”
“Are you staying?”
“Unless you really want me to go.”
“I don’t ever want you to go,” he whispered before looking away from me and opening his notebook again.
We spent the rest of the afternoon in silence, only asking questions when necessary. His mother poked her head in at one point, and he offered her that pathetically sad smile; I almost bolted out of the house, but she didn’t seem upset with me at all and actually smiled at me before letting us know she was going to start dinner and disappearing. I packed up my things at quarter to six, and Evan walked me to the door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said as I slid back into my shoes.
“Yeah.”
“Drive safe.”
“Thanks.”
I turned from the door and fingered my keys as I walked to my car. I made it home and
